


si ritrovò

by distractionpie



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alive Marco Bott, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comfort, Confrontations, Fix-It, Gen, Hugs, M/M, Post-Trost Arc, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 07:58:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20756969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: In the aftermath of the battle of Trost, Marco follows orders until he can’t anymore, feels betrayed, then takes drastic action and learns some shocking news.





	si ritrovò

**Author's Note:**

> Relationship tags: I was going for a close to canon vibe here so there’s nothing explicitly romantic/sexual here and I think it could be read as an intense platonic relationship or romantic depending on how you viewed Jean & Marco’s relationship in the show.
> 
> Thanks to jaeger_soul for looking over my draft of this and giving me the assurances I needed to dive into a fandom as big and well-established as this one.

Marco's instructors prepared him well for battle.

Of course, they could never fully capture the reality but now he's lived it he understands the impossibility of that. They did the best they could.

What he wishes they’d warned the cadets more of, is the terrifying chaos of the aftermath. Left without commanders or orders, there's no rendezvous point or clear instruction on how to proceed through the wreckage. Marco can't even discuss a plan with his squad mates because, in the scramble to take down the last few titans who hadn't come within range of the main teams on the walls, he'd had to use improvised tactics, to compensate for being down to his last blades and almost out of gas, and ended up separated from the group.

He’s alone and ill-equipped, in a city he knows only from stories and even those are little help when so many of the landmarks he might have looked for have been reduced to little more than scree. Everything in his training suggests he ought to be doing something, but none of those lessons covered material that gave him any idea of what would be useful to do in a situation like this. Stay put so that it’s easier for searchers to find him? Or seek out others? Helping civilians seems moral but how is he supposed to prioritise in the face of such destruction? Should he be looking for a leader or for his peers again? He knows what he wants, to be back with his friends, but a quick look to his left shows the road which he’d come down is blocked by a collapse cutting off the intersection where he separated from Sasha and Connie and the rubble doesn’t look stable enough for him to safely climb it. And it can hardly be wise to roam the city blindly searching for them, especially not if they're also searching for him and doing so might risk circling around each other to no success on either side. 

“Hey! Soldier! Stop daydreaming and get over here!”

The shout makes him startle. He hadn’t realised anyone was around, but, when he turns to look at the man approaching on his right, Marco takes in the garrison uniform and marks of rank and lets out a sigh of relief. Finally, an experienced officer to take the burden of making decisions off of his suddenly shaking hands.

“Don’t think of resting yet, cadet,” the man warns once he’s jogged over, glaring as Marco forces himself to attention, fear churning in his stomach. He’d thought it was over. The breach sealed and, from what he’d seen when he was last on a rooftop, the titans in the city mostly vanquished.

“Sir?” he asks. “I’m ready for orders, sir, but I’m almost out of gas.”

The officer shakes his head. “Don’t need gas for this work kid,” he says, tone softening a little as he looks Marco over. “The time for fighting is over, but there are wounded that need seeing to and structures that need making safe. You got any experience as a medic, or with building?”

Marco considers for a moment then, figuring that the officer must mean experience beyond the simple first aid training and guide to understanding structures from the point of view of using them for ODM anchors given to all cadets, shakes his head.

"Well, Captain Dreyer is setting up an emergency post two blocks that way," the officer says, waving an arm back in the direction he came from. "You think you can find your way there?"

Marco considers. After everything he's done today a two-block stroll should be nothing, he amuses himself a little imagining the way Jean would bristle at the suggestion he possibly couldn't, but the officer had found him standing lost in the middle of the street so perhaps the question is fair. He envisions the task before him and then nods, once slow and thoughtful and then again with more confidence as he says, "Yes sir!" He'd been overwhelmed by the number of problems facing him before but now he has a direction he can follow it, and an emergency outpost sounds like exactly what he needs. They'll even be coordinating people so he can find his friends.

* * *

The emergency post commanders are organising people, but in the face of the devastation, getting Marco back to his unit is hardly a priority. Instead, since he has no skills really suited to the situation but is strong and willing to work, he's assigned to literal clean up duties.

He'd rather go find his friends but there are too many injured for him to leave on selfish errands and anyway he's not sure where to begin looking after how messily they'd scattered across the city when the titans had arrived. The captain in charge of the field hospital Marco has found himself commandeered to has already passed him a message about when the postponed assigning of cadets to their chosen corps will take place, so he'll be able to catch up with his friends there without having to look, rather than wandering across the city and risking missing them or stumbling into one of the not-yet cordoned off zones where titans have damaged Trost's buildings. It would just be an embarrassment to survive an encounter with titans, to have been part of the closest thing humanity has had to a success against them in years, only to be killed by falling masonry because of being impatient. 

Working with the wounded makes him glad he became a soldier because at least titans could be fought whereas no matter how much scrubbing and fetching of hot water he's tasked with they seem utterly unable to keep the spread of disease and infection at bay. There’s even talks of a quarantine, until they can get the bodies buried or burned and the situation under control, and Marco briefly fears being trapped, forced into the Garrison Unit by their desperate need for manpower, but fortunately when the postponed date for the cadets to choose their path comes the captain lets him go -- even going so far as to thank him for his assistance and arrange for a pair of soldiers who have messages to run to escort him through the wreckage.

It’s been a matter of days since he arrived in Trost, but Marco feels like he’s aged years when he finally walks into the public offices where MP sign-ups are being held.

The place is quiet, eerily so compared to the noisy barracks he’s called home these past few years and constant busyness of the infirmary over the past few days, but that’s to be expected considering the Military Police only take the top ten graduates and Mikasa and Eren have both chosen to go elsewhere.

Still, it feels strange to have the place so deserted. There’s a man in an MP’s uniform sitting at a desk, watching Marco expectantly, but he hangs back by the door, pretending to be distracted by a twisted strap on his uniform. He should go over and get started filling out the forms, but, whenever he’d imagined this moment, he’d pictured himself and Jean celebrating their graduation to MPs together, and Jean isn't here.

Jean ought to be here.

This is what Marco has been waiting for. After the chaos of the last few days, finally getting to be in a regiment doesn’t seem so exciting as it had done before he’d seen action, but he’s still been waiting for this moment because it meant finally being free of the battle and its aftermath and he’d known that Jean would be here.

After all, why would he be absent? Last time Marco had seen Jean he'd been fine and the battle had been all but over. There had still been titan stragglers around and only an idiot would underestimate their dangers, but Jean wasn't an idiot and, since the hole in the gate had been shut, they had as close to an upper hand over the titans as it had could be possible to get. Sure it's been days of no news from any of his friends, but Marco hasn't let himself be worried, all that meant was that they’d been commandeered to ad-hoc clean up duties just like him, keeping the cadets out of the way but useful until the situation has calmed down enough that the commanders have time to actually organise their assignments is just good procedure. 

But now Marco is at the MP sign up and Jean is nowhere to be found. None of his friends are.

And he can't think of a single good reason for that.

He’s trying to keep all too many bad reasons from drifting through his head –if something bad had happened to Jean he’d know about it, he’s certain, even if nobody told him he’s sure he’d be able to sense it– when the door swings open and he sees a familiar face.

Not the one he’s looking for, but after so long separated from his friends, Annie’s customary sullen look is a joyous sight.

She’s okay, and she’ll be able to tell him where the others are and what’s taking Jean so long. But she doesn’t seem to see Marco, so focused on getting signed up, so he hangs back, lets her have her moment although he knows that Annie doesn’t feel the same way as he always has about the genuine honour of getting to be an MP.

There are a lot of papers and Marco is getting twitchy as he waits until she’s done talking to the MP's representative, a guy who is looking rather grouchy about only having two of the cadet class top ten turn up and the way Marco is hanging back to wait for his friend rather than getting his join up over with so this guy can be done with them. But that's his problem. Marco keeps watching the door, telling himself Jean is just delayed somewhere, has tried to come by a destroyed street or something, and he can't sign up when his stalling is what's keeping the recruiter waiting and ensuring that Jean doesn't miss his shot by being late, but Marco can only delay for so long before the recruiter is going to call him out and he's running out of excuses to explain why they need to wait – Trost is Jean's hometown, there's no way he wouldn't be able to find a route.

And then Annie is done with her papers, turning back towards the door, so Marco waves and she finally notices him.

Her eyes widen for a moment, more expression than Marco thinks he’s ever seen from her, as she walks over and says, “Marco? You’re... here...?”

“Of course, and so are you,” and he’s glad to see her, but not enough to keep him from the rudeness of pressing on to ask, “Who else have you seen? I’ve been waiting for Jean so we can sign up together, but it seems like everyone is late.”

“It’s no good waiting,” Annie says. "Jean's not coming."

Marco's stomach drops. "What do you mean?" he asks. "Of course he is, Jean’s always wanted to come to the MPs." Jean has to be coming, Marco has been waiting for him, and there’s no way Jean wouldn’t come. Not unless there’s some reason he doesn’t have a choice. Not unless something is wrong.

"Jean is going to the survey corps," Annie corrects. "Seeing the effects of the titans changed his mind, especially since when I saw him he--"

"The scouts?!" Marco interrupts. He’d been worried Jean was injured, but somehow that’s even worse. There’s no way Jean would do a thing like that.

This wasn’t the plan. Jean’s always scoffed at the scouts, called joining them a suicide mission that was only of interest to those so big-headed they thought they were above the dangers, or so stupid that they thought a glorious death was better than living.

Annie nods. “All of them are,” she says with a glare that makes Marco wilt a little where he stands. Annie has always shared the same sentiments as Jean, mostly interested in the Military Police as being the safest and therefore smartest move, so it’s no surprise she wouldn’t think much of the others who’d had the opportunity turning it down, but Marco just feels ill at the thought of his friends going off to sacrifice themselves while he stays behind where it’s safe. Especially if Jean is going with them now.

No.

This can’t happen.

Marco hadn't even paid attention to the information about joining the scouts when he'd been told about the sign-ups. After all, only a handful of his friends were interested in going to them so he'd figured once they were assigned those going to the scouts and the MPs would gather around the biggest group of them who were staying with the garrison to say their farewells. 

But if he waits to meet up with the others later, Jean will already be committed to the scout regiment without him.

“Where are they?”

If he weren’t talking to Annie, Marco would be a little hurt by her scornful expression as she says, "The Scout Legion sign up is at Riess square,” but since it’s Annie and that’s pretty much how her face always looks he decides to just be glad she was paying attention to the information about a regiment she wasn’t planning on going to, which gives Marco the chance to do something.

If he can make it in time. Marco hasn't had a chance to explore away from the section of town he’s been helping clean up but Jean told stories about his hometown sometimes, on nights when they were both up after all the others had gone to bed, and he's pretty sure that Riess Square is on the opposite side of town from where they are now. It seems dumb to have the recruit sign ups so far apart, but Marco supposes that most people know where they want to go long before selection day comes and if there was any indecision it would be between the scouts or the garrison, not an issue for those who managed to get the rank needed to go to the Military Police.

Except it is, because Jean’s not here, he’s bailed on Marco to go join the scouts for some stupid reason, as if all the plans they’d made together meant nothing.

And that’s not fine. Jean’s got the right to make his own choices, but after three years side by side Marco thinks he at least deserves an explanation and a goodbye. He hasn’t gone looking for Jean because he’d been confident that they’d come together here, but if Jean isn’t going to come to him then Marco will just have to go to Riess Square. The scouts have never been as interesting to him as the MPs, the world beyond the walls useless if they couldn’t even protect the people behind them, but Jean’s leadership during the battle has only confirmed the confidence Marco has always had in him, and if Jean now thinks the scouts are the right place to be then Marco just wishes Jean had found a way to pass a message to him more efficiently than by just not showing up so that Marco wouldn’t have to deal with being late for recruitment.

“Reiss Square,” he says. “Thanks, Annie! Maybe I can still get there in time to sign up.”

"Wait! Marco!" Annie calls out, voice more passionate than usual but Marco can't stop. He has to hope that more people than just Jean decided at the last minute to change their pick to the scouts, there's no way the sign up won't be finished by the time he gets over to where they are, but if Marco gets lucky and there's enough of them it will take some time to organise the recruits so the cadets won't leave the city for their new post until morning.

Still, he turns to wave. Annie has always been the solitary type, but she’s still one of his classmates and she’s helped him find out where he needs to be.

“Really, Annie, you’re the best!” he calls, “Good luck in the MPs!”

He only half-way knows where Riess Square is, but if that’s where they’re holding a recruitment meeting it can’t be too hard to find.

* * *

Marco is not lucky. By the time he finds his way through ruined streets to the square where the scouts were meeting, the whole place has cleared out. Asking around reveals that a whole crowd of cadets had turned up but most of them had lost their nerve before the moment of the final decision, leaving behind a small enough group of recruits that the commander had been able to equip them and depart while Marco had still been jogging in circles around the backstreets trying to find any place other than this one half destroyed fountain --Sina accompanied by a battered Rose and a Maria split almost in two, flowing more pink than clear-- that all paths seemed to lead back to.

But he does manage to find out where the scouting legion have gone and, despite his getting lost, they can’t be more than a few hours ahead of him on the road to the Calaneth District.

Marco isn’t sure where he stands now he’s failed to sign up to any regiment, the possibility of such a thing had never even come up in his training, but when they’d regrouped in Trost to prepare for Eren’s counterattack Commander Pyxis had said anyone who had witnessed the devastation the titan’s wrought upon arriving in the city was free to leave and Marco has never heard that order rescinded so it can’t technically be desertion for him to follow the Scouts rather than seeking out new orders from more nearby officers.

It’s not hard to find a caravan of travellers to join, it seems like a lot of people are fleeing Trost, feeling that the city isn’t safe even though the hole in the walls has been blocked off, and there are also plenty of people who seem willing to take advantage of that fact for coin, although Marco tries not to judge considering how many people’s livelihoods must have been damaged by the destruction in the city.

Going with such a party makes for an unpleasant trip though. He’s never travelled alone before and he supposes he’s not travelling alone now, but he doesn’t know any of these people and they don’t seem like they’d welcome friendliness, they stay close to their own travel companions and seem mistrustful of strangers in way that makes Marco want to tell them to stop because people are stronger together. But he knows it would be wrong to argue with people who are so hurt, and he’s not sure he could explain himself in a fair manner, not when he knows that part of their reason their isolation bothers him so much is his own hurt at Jean for abandoning him.

It makes him feel all wrong inside. They'd agreed they were going to the MPs together, why would Jean suddenly decide to leave that dream behind. Leave and not even find Marco to talk it over. Not even say goodbye.

Well, he’s going to make Jean explain himself. He hates to argue but, when it comes to something this important, he needs to make Jean understand: friends don’t just run off to the scouts on their own.

Of course, it’s not as simple as just finding Jean, it takes a day and a night to get to the survey corps base and the scouts Marco goes to introduce himself to don’t seem to know what to make of him presenting himself even after he gives them the explanation he settled on while he was travelling -- that he was separated from the other cadets in Trost and hadn’t signed up to any regiment but wants to join them now. It’s not the whole truth but he’s pretty sure the business-like scouts don’t want to hear about how he’d actually always planned on being an MP but then his best friend hadn’t come with him and the thought of going without him was just impossible for Marco to accept.

It turns out all of the new recruits are busy with activities and the section commanders are also busy dealing with having new recruits, so Marco is sent to a side room that he’s told is a common room even though it seems dusty with disuse. Helping clean the place up would probably aid him making a good first impression, but all Marco has with him is his gear and a small pack of personal items and the room is bare but for some battered chairs and tables and, having been told to wait here, he doesn't think it's wise to start exploring in search of something to use as a dust rag.

So he waits.

He's never considered himself an impatient person and he doesn't think he's fooling himself to believe nobody else has ever labelled him that way either, but this wait makes his skin prickle and leaves him pacing the room because when he sits he just jitters. It comes of being so close. He's done everything he can to get here and now there's nothing he can do but wait. Wait to see his friends again. Wait to get answers from Jean. Wait for the sound of footsteps and voices in the hall outside. Wait for the door to swing open. 

Reiner and Bertolt are the first to arrive, but they’re whispering to each other and don’t seem to be paying enough attention to their surroundings to even notice Marco. Sasha and Connie are hot on their heels though and when Sasha sees Marco she stumbles, knocking Connie sideways and they both nearly take Krista, who was following, down with them -- the spectacle of the collision finally causing Reiner and Bertolt to notice him. 

“M-Marco?!"

“Hi guys,” he says. He’s glad to see them but he hadn’t expected to be faced with them all at once and can’t help but worry that they’ll want him to explain what he’s doing here and think he’s weird if he admits the main reason he came is because he's mad Jean was going to leave him without so much as saying goodbye.

They're all staring at him and Marco feels his face getting warm. He can’t blame them for being a bit surprised to see him when they must have expected him to be on his way to wall Sina by now but having them look at him so intensely is weird, after all, it’s not like they didn’t see him nearly every day for three years in training.

“Um...” He’s sure they don’t mean to make him feel unwelcome, but he can’t help but feel like something is wrong for them to be reacting like this. “So, you all choose the scouts then? Eren must be pleased.”

Before any of them can answer, there are more footsteps outside, reassuring him that the others are just lagging behind, and the next two figures through the door are Armin and Mikasa, who also stop and stare in a way that makes Marco feel self-conscious (is it really as strange as all that for him to have come after the friends who left him behind without so much as a goodbye and good luck?) but they both manage to avoid making Eren walk into them. He still stumbles, though unlike the others he stares only for a moment before scowling and spinning on his heel.

"What the hell, horse-face?!" he growls. 

“What is it now?” comes Jean’s voice from the hall, so casual in the face of Eren's sudden rage. “What here could possibly be freakier than you, Eren?”

"You're a sick, lying asshole," Eren snarls, venomous enough that Marco startles even though he’s used to the way Eren and Jean bicker, charging forward so that Jean barely even gets to step in the door before Eren is pushing at his chest and repeating his curses.

For a moment, Marco is utterly overwhelmed by his relief at the sight of him, he’d been confident in Jean’s ability to make it through the battle and he’s sure if anything had happened to him Annie would have said something, but now finally the thread of tension that had wound tighter every time he lost track of Jean in the fighting for even a split second comes loose. Jean is safe. 

The relief doesn’t last though. Eren is still shoving and swearing at Jean even though Marco can’t see any reason for it when the group had seemed cheerful enough as they’d come into the room, but, stranger still, Jean isn't pushing back or laughing off Eren's hot-headed attitude. 

Instead he stumbles backwards at the force of Eren’s hands and then stands frozen, staring past Eren as if he’s not even there.

Marco had planned to yell at Jean when he caught up to him -- it would have to wait until he’d sorted out his arrival with the officers and perhaps not in front of the others because he was annoyed at Jean but he didn’t want to humiliate him or make their other friends feel like they had to take Marco’s side, but he’d wanted Jean understand how big of a betrayal leaving him behind was.

But holding onto anger has never been in Marco’s nature, and it’s impossible now when Jean resembles a ghost of himself. 

Marco had followed him here with the intention of joining Jean in the survey corps if he truly had decided to sign up here and it wasn’t all a big misunderstanding, but looking at him now he wonders if he ought to be talking Jean into asking for a transfer so they can go into the MPs together like they planned. Because Jean, standing in his neat new uniform in the survey corps barracks looks more wrecked than he had even as his home turned to a battleground and they’d been thrown against the titans barely a warning. His skin is sallow, with dark circles under his eyes, and even though it's only been a few days Marco swears he looks skinnier.

And it’s definitely wrong that he hasn’t argued back with Eren yet.

Marco is about to say something himself when Mikasa’s voice cuts through Eren’s incomprehensible tirade, “Eren, stop!”

“Why should I stop?” Eren says. “This asshole, how dare he tell us what he did? He let us think-- but Marco is right here! What kind of scumbag--”

“Jean wouldn’t lie about that,” Armin interrupts him. “Look at him, Jean’s as shocked as any of us. More, even.”

Eren pauses, tilting his head as he looks at Jean and then says in a voice far softer than Marco expected to hear from his brash classmate, “Oh. You mean he... Huh.” He curls his shoulders inward then, shooting Jean an uncomfortable look, and muttering something that sounds like an apology.

“Jean!” Marco calls out, any chance of staying mad at Jean for leaving totally abandoning Marco now his friend is standing in front of him.

But instead of doing something normal like saying hello back to Marco, Jean reaches up as if to salute, no, to reach into his breast pocket and pull something out.

The whole scene is too strange and Marco is about to ask what’s going on when Jean shoulders his way past the others, who are all still frozen around the entrance, and walks up to Marco. He stops weirdly close, staring right into Marco’s face but with strange blank eyes that remind Marco of the time during the second year in training when a fever spread through the cadets and half their class had ended up so sick they were seeing hallucinations. Illness would certainly go some way to explaining the state he’s in, although Marco worries for the quality of the leadership here if Jean is being allowed to go about visibly unwell instead of being sent to an infirmary or at least bed rest.

“Jean, are you okay?”

But Jean just continues to stare, eyes darting between Marco and the object Jean’s holding between them. Confused, Marco squints at the thing Jean is holding. It's a shard of something, bone white and brittle edged, but too small for him to recognise what it might once have been part of. “Jean, c’mon, this isn’t funny. Talk to me…”

The object drops from Jean’s hands, hits the ground with a quiet tap, but Marco’s curiosity about it comes second to the way Jean is blinking hard like he’s got something in his eyes but finally looking at Marco like he’s seeing him.

“Marco...?”

He raises his now empty hand and reaches up to cup the side of Marco's face, the touch feather light and hesitant in a way that Jean's actions never usually are, then traces down his neck with trembling fingers before dropping to grip at his arm. 

“Jean, what’s wrong?” Marco glances over Jean’s shoulders at the others, hoping one of them might have answers but all he’s met with are averted gazes. “Please... you’re... you’re freaking me out.”

“Marco...” hearing his name a shaky whisper in Jean’s mouth only adds to his fear, but he hardly has a moment to dwell on it before being startled by Jean raising his other arm to wrap around Marco, almost collapsing against his chest. “God... _Marco_...”

Terror surges in Marco and he curls his arms around Jean in return, supporting him as he shakes. It feels strange, this situation is so contrary to how private Jean usually is when it comes to any hint of softness or vulnerability, but right now he doesn’t seem to care that the others are all around them, burying his face in Marco’s shoulder and gripping him so tight that it hurts a little where Marco is still sore from the fighting but that hardly seems important when he can feel Jean’s hitching breaths against his neck.

He’d convinced himself that Jean must be safe after the battle and, despite his confusion at Jean’s decision to go to the scouts, talking to Annie had seemed like an assurance that Jean was okay. Even accounting for his head start, he’s only been with the scout regiment two days, not long enough for an expedition to have already happened to have done this to Jean, and yet he seems more shaken now than he was in the midst of the titan attack in Trost.

Something happened to Jean while Marco was absent. Something horrible.

There’s a dampness spreading in his shirt collar that under any other circumstances he’d swear couldn’t be tears, but Jean is crumpled against him and none of the others even look surprised, even Eren has averted his gaze uncomfortably rather than watching and memorising this moment to tease Jean with later, and Marco feels like he’s drowning in uselessness -- far more even than in Trost, because Titans could be fought with swords and ODM gear, and even the diseases and injuries in the infirmary he could help by keeping the place clean and stocked with hot water and fresh bandages, but he doesn’t even know how Jean has come to be this hurt, let alone what assistance he can give other than to keep holding Jean until whatever has overcome him passes.

His focus is on Jean, but he hears the door swing open again and wonders who it is -- Ymir maybe, or some survey corps member who is interested in being friendly with the new recruits? Certainly nobody Jean would want to witness this moment, and Marco grips him a little tighter even though he knows there’s no way he can shield Jean from this.

Even anticipating a newcomer, the severe voice that interrupts them startles him.

"Have you all forgotten your cleaning duties - what are you recruits doing?” 

Marco jerks his head over towards the door, recognising the interloper as a senior officer from his tone and the way the others jump to attention, but it still takes him a moment to realise that he’s looking at none other than the famous Captain Levi.

Who is scowling at him.

“You aren’t one of the recruits,” Captain Levi says. “Who are you and who let you in?”

Marco had planned to introduce himself formally to the officers of the scout regiment as a new recruit and apologise for missing the sign up in Trost and being late, but he can hardly salute or really make any attempt at decorum with Jean still clutching at his chest, seemingly having no regard for the presence of a senior officer. Still, he does the best he can. “My name is Marco Bott, sir, of the 104th cadet corps. Two soldiers by the gate told me to come here and wait for an officer to be free to speak with me.”

Captain Levi looks him over thoughtfully, not even faltering at the sight of Jean wrapped around him. “Have you come on an errand from the garrison regiment?

Of course, he can’t see the patches on Marco’s uniform that give away that he is unattached and would explain his presence here. “No, sir. I didn’t join the garrison. I came to the survey corps--”

“You have to let him stay,” Eren interrupts, and Marco smiles a little, glad at least one of his friends is happy to see him. Eren is making a pretty big assumption about his plans, but it’s good to have his support even if it would probably have been better for Eren to let him finish explaining himself first.

Eren’s comment opens the floodgates.

“Commander Erwin did say that the survey corps needed more people,” Armin chips in, Krista nodding along with him.

Then Connie blurts out, “Marco will be a great recruit. He was ranked seventh in our class!"

“Yeah, if you took Connie you can’t turn him down!”

“HEY! I beat you didn’t I, Sasha, and since they took you they definitely shouldn’t say no to Marco!”

“Hey, can you all shut up and let the new guy speak for himself!” Captain Levi interrupts. “New guy, did you come here to sign up?”

“Yes, sir!”

There’s no reason to hesitate. He’d come here to find his friends and to understand what Jean had left him for, but, though he doesn’t understand why, the hand he has on Jean’s back is brushing up against the embroidered wings of the survey corps and if Jean is here to stay then so is Marco.

“The survey corps aren’t in the habit of turning down willing volunteers, as long as they understand the danger and are prepared to do the work assigned to them,” Captain Levi says slowly, with an unsubtle glare towards the others which makes Marco think the others pleading his case may not have given him the most favourable impression of their class. “Although being late to recruitment does not give a good impression of your capability, cadet.”

That’s true enough, so Marco nods. And he knows explaining that he’s late because he wanted to be in the Military Police and is only here now because Jean is, probably won’t improve the captain’s opinion of him, even if it is the truth.

“I got separated from the others in Trost,” he explains carefully. “I meant to meet them before we signed up together, but it seems that plans changed and nobody told me.” 

“Can’t keep track of objectives,” the Captain concludes, which makes Marco grimace. He’s not a whiner but this feels unfair when the reason for him not being on time was that he was busy following orders to help in the infirmary and Jean hadn’t sought him out to share his changed plans. “And the rest of you just left your fellow cadet behind. What a great bunch of recruits we have this year.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Eren blurts out, several of the others finally turning their gazes away from Marco to stare at him, shocked at his attitude towards the captain. Marco knows Eren left Trost ahead of the other recruits, but surely he can’t have grown so comfortable as to backtalk an officer of the survey corps in such a brief time. “I bet the only reason they didn’t look for him is because Kirschtein has been going around telling everyone he was dead for some reason.”

What?

Being called out by Eren seems to jolt Jean back to himself and he jerks out of Marco’s arms, sidestepping unsteadily as he protests, “I saw... I found... I thought I found...”

“Yeah, well maybe you were honestly wrong, but you still had us all thinking something horrible had happened to Marco just because whatever you found you didn’t even bother to look closely,” Eren accuses.

“Well I’d like to see how well you recognise a face once it’s been bitten in half,” Jean snaps back.

Bitten in...

“You thought I was...” Marco says, only fully comprehending his own horror as he sees it reflected back at him from Jean’s face.

Whoever Jean had found, some other poor guy who looked like Marco (or at least, half like him), he’d met a terrible end, and this whole time Marco has been frustrated with Jean for leaving him behind, Jean has been thinking he’s the one left behind in a far more permanent way.

Jean hadn’t looked like he was a ghost when Marco first saw him again, he realises, but like he’d seen a ghost. As if Marco were haunting him.

No wonder Jean had reacted so oddly to his presence. Just the thought of it makes him want to drag Jean back into his arms, and the only thing that holds him back is Captain Levi’s interruption: “As excuses go, that’s not a bad one. Just don’t do it again. And the rest of you, don’t think you can get your friend to pick up the slack on your duties either. I’ll have one of the section leaders put him on the roster right away.”

"I... Yes captain. Thank you, sir," Marco stammers. He hadn't realised how scared he was that he wouldn't be allowed to stay until the fear fell away and he was left feeling lighter. And once he has duties he will hopefully be able to undo whatever bad impression his strange arrival has given the captain of him although that concern seems foolish now, when Marco can’t tear his eyes away from Jean’s shattered expression. 

Captain Levi gives him one last dubious look and reminds the others again of their chores then leaves, taking with him the distraction of Marco securing his place in the survey corps but leaving him with nothing to do but face what the others had been thinking in his absence.

The others, who are staring, except for Jean who has pulled away and thrust his hands into his pockets, eyes downcast. There’s so much Marco wants to say to him, wants to hug Jean again, but he’s not sure that Jean would welcome it with all the others here now he's over the initial shock, and Marco would feel cruel asking everyone for privacy when it’s clear that they’ve also been upset over this horrible mistake.

“I... you guys, you all thought I was dead?” he says, looking around at them. Knowing they thought that explains a lot about their strange reaction to his presence. It’s hard enough having lost so many friends in the battle, but if one of them returned unexpectedly Marco’s not sure he’d know what to do other than stare either.

Eren is giving Jean an unpleasant look again, but Marco disregards him to focus on the others. Eren’s titan shifting ability made him the subject of rumours and so Marco already has a general idea of what his situation must have been, isolated until his trial and then taken away to the survey corps before everyone else. The others though, they’d been around for the aftermath of Trost, they must have heard about Jean’s discovery just after it happened, maybe even seen ‘his’ body for themselves.

"You didn’t come back." Jean's voice carries the same hurt and accusation that Marco had been feeling when he'd thought Jean had just ditched him but amplified a thousand-fold. “I looked for you, but all I found was... was... well I was wrong, I didn’t find you at all. But you could have found us. Why didn't you come back?”

“I...” all of Marco’s perfectly sensible reasons seem weak now. Sure, he was needed on clean up duty, but he could have pushed to be put on clean up duty in the same part of town as his friends were. If he’d known that the others thought he was dead, that he was being mourned, he would have gone to them immediately, but it hadn’t even occurred to him that not seeing him after the battle might be a worry for them, not when he’d been so focused on trying to keep himself from worrying over not seeing them.

Everyone in the room is watching him now and he can see the question on all of their faces. He’d trusted in chance and military order to see to things rather than making an effort to come back to them and in doing so he’d left them mourning.

“I’m sorry,” he says, lamely. “I thought that when the recruitments happened I’d see everyone, but the postponed arrangements were so separated and...”

“It’s not your fault Marco,” Krista offers. “The days after the battle were confusing for everyone. So many plans we thought we could rely on were destroyed.”

He nods. He hadn’t meant to leave them behind, he’d just trusted too much that things would return to normal and by the time he realised just how much things had changed they were already gone.

“I’m still sorry,” he says, focusing his words on Jean, who has the greatest reason of all to resent his absence. “I should have come back to you, I meant to come back to you, but everything happened so fast and by the time I realised, you were already gone. But that’s why I came here.”

“Well, I’m glad Kirschtein got it wrong,” Eren says. “And that you changed your mind about the MPs. You’ll be a great help in the scouting formation--”

“The rest of us have chores to do,” Armin cuts in, before Eren gets going on one of his titan rants, which they’ve all learned to sense coming. “We need to go, but you did most of your assignments this morning Jean, so you should stay with Marco.”

Marco smiles at the blond, hoping that Armin can see how grateful he is for Amin’s efforts to give them some time alone. He wants to talk to all of his friends, but the rest of them will be okay with waiting, whereas Jean’s pain is an open wound that Marco can’t ignore but probably isn’t safe to expose further while all the others are still crowded around.

Eren looks like he’s about to argue, but Mikasa grabs his arm, already tugging him towards the door, whispering something that makes him comply.

“You can both meet us at dinner,” Krista suggests, following them. “We’ll have time then to tell you everything we’ve learned since we got here. Jean will show you the way.”

Talk of dinner, even if it’s hours off, is enough to get Sasha moving and Reiner and Bertolt follow behind her.

“Yeah, you should meet us there, but you should probably pick that up off the floor first,” Connie, the last to the exit, adds, pointing to the shard Jean had dropped earlier. “We spent so long cleaning this place up, Jean, you’re lucky Captain Levi was distracted by Marco. If he finds out you’re leaving pieces of, well, bone around the place we’ll get extra chore duty for sure.”

Bone?

Marco glances down at the dropped thing that Jean had been keeping so close and now he knows what he’s looking at he can recognise it, he’s seen scraps of bone like that in the pyres lit at the infirmary even though he’d always been spared that particular part of clean-up duty, but why would Jean be carrying a broken fragment of bone around only to discard it at the sight of Marco?

“You...” he stoops to pick up the shard, mindful that the edges might hurt somebody who handled it carelessly, and cradles it in his hand. “This is his, isn’t it? That guy you thought was me.”

Jean shrugs. “I... honestly, with the communal pyres things got mixed up...” he says haltingly, avoiding Marco’s gaze. “But I wanted to have something.”

Jean had taken the very last piece of what he’d believed to be Marco’s remains, cold and broken and sharp, and carried it by his heart to the scouting regiment that he’s always said would only lead to a painful end.

Marco shudders.

It’s wrong.

The thought of it makes his chest ache. The fragment is awful, a piece of death that should be nowhere near Jean. The idea that for all their years of living and training together, Jean had no better token of their relationship than such a morbid thing, makes him feel even sicker than the idea of the death the bone shard came from. He hopes that whoever that guy was, his people have something better than what Jean got for a keepsake. Marco doesn’t want to think about dying, but, if things go badly for real, Jean should have something better to remember him by than bones. He deserves something that will let him hold on to happy memories.

Happy memories that they’re going to make more of, he tells himself sternly, because he’s not dead and neither is Jean and maybe this wasn’t exactly what he’d planned, but he’d rather be in the scouting regiment with Jean than behind wall Sina alone and safe from physical harm but unable to protect his friend.

Though he still doesn’t understand why they’re here. Jean had always wanted to be an MP and the only thing Marco can think of that has changed is... oh.

"Did you decide to go to the scouts because of that guy you thought was me?" he blurts out.

“I... it felt like the right choice,” Jean deflects. “Trost proved that even staying behind the walls isn’t a reason to hope for safety, so why not fight.”

"But... you always planned on going to the military police? And just because it’s not fighting titans, doesn’t mean they aren’t doing important work.”

Jean shrugs, avoiding meeting Marco's eyes he says, "We were both supposed to be going to the MPs, if you weren't around there was no reason to stay with that plan," which Marco is certain is at least half a lie because Jean had spoken about his ambitions for that branch before they'd even met and never once hinted before about thinking differently. “What about you? You really wanted to be an MP. And for better reasons than I ever did. You actually believe in all the stuff. But you let Captain Levi treat you like you were joining up here instead of explaining that you’re just visiting.”

“I... I thought serving the king was important,” Marco acknowledges. “I still do think that. But, he’s just one man who already has plenty of people and defences to protect him.” Not like Jean, who plans on going beyond the safety of the walls, would have done it without Marco to watch his back. “After seeing what titans can do, I think I have to help stop them.”

“You don’t,” Jean interrupts. “You’d... after everything you saw in Trost, you really wanna go up against more titans? You’re not Jaeger, you’re not suicidal.”

“Well, neither are you,” Marco says, trying to believe the words as he says them. That much must still be true. However Trost might have hurt him, seeing his hometown destroyed and losing so many friends, Jean is a survivor and Marco’s certain that hasn’t changed even in the survey corps. “This regiment is dangerous, but so is every other one. But it’s the right thing to do, that’s why you’re here, right?”

Jean scowls. “I’m just saying. You could still leave. Tell Captain Levi you made a mistake but you’re going back to the MPs.”

“Would you come?” Marco asks. He doesn’t want to leave the others but he understands why they’re here, their ambitions have always been leading this way, but if there’s still a chance for him and Jean to have their simple childhood dream of the MPs…

“I already signed up to this branch,” Jean says. “For real, not just by mistaken assumption. If I left, I’d be a deserter.”

And if Marco goes to the inner walls now, while Jean is tied to the scouts, he’ll be a deserter too, in his own eyes if not those of the military. But, “Do you want me to go, Jean?”

Jean starts to shake his head and then freezes but Marco knows that his first reaction is the honest one, even as Jean slowly says, “I want you to have your dream of being an MP. And the scout regiment is dangerous.”

“I was thirteen when that was my dream,” Marco says. And fourteen, and fifteen, but it had still been a decision made when he knew so little about the world and the main reason he’s held on to it with such certainty is because he’s never been given a reason to consider any other choice until Jean hadn’t shown up to the sign up. “And you can’t complain about the dangers when you signed up.”

Something shifts in Jean’s expression, taking his glare from angry to pained as he says, “But you-- that’s different.”

“I was only ranked one behind you in class,” Marco says, perplexed. Jean had wanted to rank in the top ten and he’d wanted Marco to make that rank with him so they could both qualify for the military police but they’ve never been competitive with each other, there’s no reason for Jean to act like there’s some huge gap between them now. 

“I can’t... Marco I found your body, I stood at your pyre as it burned,” Jean blurts out. “I can’t... If you stay here I might have to watch you die.”

“So it’s better if I die where you can’t see?” Marco asks, wondering where Jean gets such confidence that he won’t be the one who dies easily in the survey corps, as Marco’s been dreading ever since Annie shared the news, or if he just doesn’t care.

“You wouldn’t die in the Military Police,” Jean says. “You’d be safe. You know that’s why I always wanted us to go to that branch.”

He knows Jean picked that branch for his own survival, but Marco had never really thought about safety being part of the reason Jean encouraged Marco to keep pursuing his ambitions in that direction, he’d just figured Jean would want a friend in the capital and their goals happened to align.

“It’s true that an elite interior posting is safer, but it’s still the army,” Marco says. “I would be safest there with you watching my back, but if that can’t happen then I’d rather have my safety come from having you watching my back than from being there.”

“But I didn’t!” Jean snaps, turning away. “In Trost I was giving orders that got the people following me killed, and you said you trusted me as a leader but then I lost sight of you and... and...” The choked sob that steals the rest of Jean’s words seals Marco’s decision to reach out for him again, wrapping his arms securely around his friend, a physical reminder that he isn’t going anywhere and that Jean wouldn’t be leaving him again.

“Jean... You know it won’t be like that, right,” he says. He knows taking command of the panicking cadets hadn’t been easy for Jean, but that had been a freak situation. The rest of their service is bound to be more organised. “The survey corps are prepared for their expeditions. We’ll have a proper commander to be in charge of things.”

“But you wanted to go to the MPs and be safe until I decided to come here instead,” Jean mutters. “So it’ll be my fault again if--”

“No!” Marco squeezes him tightly, not sure how else to make him listen. “I’m fine, and even if... even if I had died in Trost, it wouldn’t have been your fault Jean.”

Wordlessly, Jean shudders, and Marco realises he’s found the thing that’s let this wound infect Jean to the soul.

“I chose to become a military cadet, even though I knew I had no guarantee of making the top ten,” he reminds Jean gently. How could any of this nightmare ever fall on Jean’s shoulders? It’s the titans that are to blame, they’re all just doing what they can to live with that horror. “I chose to stay and keep fighting in Trost after Pyxis gave people permission to leave. I even chose to stay and help at the infirmary after the fighting instead of finding you, and I’m sorry for that. And I chose to come here. None of that is your responsibility. You couldn’t have stopped me if you tried.”

Jean’s head jerks up at that, his eyes going wide. “Excuse me?”

“You heard,” Marco says, letting his tone slip into gentle teasing, trying to make this situation something normal again. “You might have ranked above me, but that’s because you were the best at using ODM gear. In hand to hand classes, I always did better than you.”

“I--” Jean’s face twists as he clearly battles with his pride and his fears versus the fact they both know what Marco is saying is true. “That’s why you’re so well suited to the military police,” he suggests, but it feels more like a token protest now.

“I don’t want to be in the military police anymore,” Marco reminds him, not without Jean.

“I... I don’t want you to go away, I just wish... I’m glad you’re okay right now.”

It’s only been a matter of days since graduation, but Jean looks so much older than he did at training as he sighs.

“I know,” Marco says, because he wishes they could both be somewhere safer than this too, but as long as there are titans around there’s nowhere in the world that can be true and if there’s no safe place for them then the next best place to be is wherever Jean is. And even the survey corps aren’t on expeditions all the time.

For now, at least, they can be happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun personal fact, until this show popped up in my Netflix recommendations a few weeks ago I hadn't watched any anime in years (and even then mostly I watched fluffier stuff) so I was not very familiar with how some things are stylised in certain contexts. Such as dead bodies. This combined with the general fishiness of Marco's death (like the ODM gear missing from his body and it happening off screen when the last time we'd seen him he was fine and the fighting was wrapping up) led me to the strong conclusion that what the corpse scene was showing was that Jean, traumatised by his responsibility for making tactical decisions that couldn't prevent the deaths of all his team, had found a mangled corpse that had some resemblance to his friend and, in his fearful and guilty state of mind, assumed it was Marco and been too horrified to look more closely and notice the discrepancies.  
So I wholeheartedly believed that Marco would be coming back. And I waited with baited breath for most of the rest of S1 for him to appear appear like sunshine from behind the clouds of angst before realising I was almost at the end of the season and maybe, just maybe, I'd misinterpreted something and my hopes were misplaced so I went to the wiki and dug into some spoilers and had my excited bubble of denial thoroughly burst.
> 
> But this fic is what happened in my _heart_.


End file.
